The
Sheep made the journey for the 6th straight year to participant in the
annual Make-a-Wish tournament. The weekend started out rough when
the Shepherd missed his flight. Yes, missed his flight!! This
is the same guy who organizes this whole event and all the ice times
leading up to the event: he dropped the ball on this one. We
showed up at the airport 29 minutes before departure and they wouldn't let
us check in anymore. We (the Shepherdess and myself) were stuck with
8 bags of gear since Kevin and Kandy were able to board but not check
luggage (they checked in via the internet before going to the
airport). We found a spot on a plane to Denver leaving about an hour
later. Thankfully, Jason and Megan came to the rescue in
Denver. Needless to say, it was a bad start to the weekend.
And everyone knew about it since I had left about 13-14 phone messages for
people looking for a ride from Denver to the Springs. "Oh, so
you're the one who missed his flight!"

The
sponsor hotel was the Academy, just across the street from the rink.
An EXCELLENT improvement from last year. This hotel was perfect
because it was close to the rink, Guthrie's and plenty of other food
places. You could even walk home from Guthrie's if you wanted to.

The weather left a little to
be desired. Cold and snow off and on. But it could have been
worse.

The
Sheep had 2 brand new members on the team for this tournament: Alan Torborg and Jen Tweed. Both of them have come up through the Sheep farm
system we like to call the Meerkats. EEEEEKKK!! (just
kidding!) Both had great tournaments and we were
glad to have them on the team!!!

We
celebrated an induction into the Sheep
100 Club in our first game against Summit - last year's champions.
Neil Chaffee was playing his 100th game in a Sheep uniform. Congrats
Neil! We played a very close game with Summit. Kurt from Summit was
able to score 2 goals and one other player scored one. We had two goals
from Alan Torborg. Sheep lose a close one 2-3.Game
2 was against Bootleggers. This was also a close game that the Sheep lost
by one goal. Both teams had ample opportunities for more goals. Game
3 was a 5-0 win over Japan and Game 4 was a 6-0 win over Pueblo. Jason,
Alan and Meg in those last two games accumulated 9 goals and 4 assists!!
Our defense shut down our opponents in traditional Sheep fashion. Jessi
led the team in assists with 6 even though she was sick. Neil put in a
nice shot in the Sheep's last game to cap a great 2005 season!

Losing
to both MN teams by 1 goal made the Sheep's chances of advancing to the
championship game very slim. Only the top two teams advanced. We had
to hope for Bootleggers to lose to Summit and Japan. That didn't happen
and we had to watch the championship game from outside the ice as Summit
defeated Bootleggers 5-0. The Sheep felt like we should have been in that
game and we could have given Summit a run for their money. Oh well, could
have, should have, would have.